Toto Wolff fears Lewis Hamilton could win F1 title because of Mercedes | F1 | Sport

Toto Wolff is fearful of the looming threat of Lewis Hamilton in the F1 title race after Kimi Antonelli suffered British Grand Prix heartache. Having won Saturday’s sprint race and qualified on pole, Antonelli was in a healthy position to win the Grand Prix too. But an issue, and later a penalty for exceeding track limits while struggling to keep control of his Mercedes, ultimately saw Antonelli finish P16 while Ferrari’s Hamilton secured his 16th Silverstone podium.

Antonelli also suffered a DNF at the Barcelona-Cataluyna Grand Prix last month while running second with four laps remaining. By contrast, Hamilton has been on the podium in four of the last five races, finishing second twice and winning in Barcelona. The seven-time world champion feared he might have his Silverstone P3 stripped away from him but the stewards opted against punishing him for an alleged yellow flag infringement. That means Antonelli’s lead over the Brit has been cut from 47 points to 32 with 13 races still to go.

The Italian’s team-mate George Russell finished second and is seven points ahead of Hamilton but has also suffered from Mercedes‘ reliability issues. And Mercedes team principal Wolff fears that his old driver could come back to haunt him in his chase of a record-breaking eighth title.

Wolff said: “I’m really happy for George and all the team. Scoring P2 at Silverstone, that’s something I’m really happy for. But it’s so many points. When you lose 43 points and with George it was 25, it’s just a lot. If that continues to accumulate…

“You can only win a championship if we get this under control. They have both had the bad luck of DNFing – Kimi now twice, George once, and the season is long. George just needs to continue to believe that he can do it, finding those little gremlins in the car that cause him trouble at the moment.”

On Antonelli’s problem, Wolff continued: “We think it happened at Turn Nine because that’s when it first appeared. It’s on us. A car should not break. I don’t think the ride was worse than any laps before.

“He couldn’t turn anymore. First it was blocked by a carbon part. We haven’t done the post-mortem for what’s happened. It’s just fury we have at the moment.

“You never know in motor racing but we had more than a handful of laps with a second-and-a-half more in performance. In any case, it would have been great to watch these two drivers [Leclerc and Antonelli] battle it out.”

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Wolff expects the battle with Ferrari to be a close one. The Austrian explained: “It’s a tough development race and Ferrari have been bringing parts more than we have. Silverstone should have been a bogey track for them with the energy.

“They were thinking they would have a five or six tenths deficit but they were absolutely on par with us for big parts of the race. This is a tough fight for us.”

Antonelli said: “I couldn’t even get one point. When things looked like I was going to be able to get one, Safety Car came out and I got the penalty which I know is the rule but I find it a bit unfair.

“It’s OK if you gain by going off but I couldn’t keep the car on track in that instance. I was trying my best to stay on track but I just couldn’t. I still thought I could get P10 today, at least one point, but couldn’t even get that.

“I could feel something broke, I just didn’t know what was going on. Initially we thought it was the front wing but it wasn’t. Didn’t go our way.

“It was a shame because I think we had a real shot for the win today. It’s extra motivation to be back stronger and to do even better.”